A Scent of Fall 2006

I hear a lot about how it is like 2007 or 2000 among financial pundits.  While there is a little bit of 2000 in this market, if you look at investor attitudes, it is completely different.  It is nothing like 2007 because you have no stresses in the credit markets.  It actually feels most like the fall of 2006, after you had a bond selloff earlier in that year.   When those fears of higher interest rates subsided, the stock market bottomed and kept going higher and higher, as yields went back down.  

Also in the fall of 2006, you had extremely low volatility among the financial asset classes, just like you do now.  If this market really follows the same script as 2006-2007, then you have another 200 points of upside in the S&P.  Although I don't think we get to 2100 within a year, it is distinctly possible.  

The biggest difference between then and now is that Fed funds rates are at zero, and the economy is actually weaker now than it was then.  So 2014 is without a doubt a worse market to be long in than 2006, but if we get an overshoot, which I give about a 30% chance of happening, it could take us to 2100.  

Now until June 5 is probably the safest time to be long that I've seen in a long time.  The  Draghi put getting priced in.

Gartman Now Bullish Both Stocks and Bonds

Dennis Gartman, the world-renowned investor, has turned bullish on both stocks and bonds.  He showed up on CNBC Fast Money and flip-flopped again after looking for a correction last week!  By the way, I am not going to short stocks because of him, but it is one of the indicators that I look at.

I actually got short bonds yesterday, at sort of bad prices compared to where it is trading now, so I was early.  Bonds are another thing where I should wait for perfect conditions to short, and yesterday I jumped the gun.  I will stay short into next week, as I believe the bond bus has gained too many fast money traders and is due for a little shake out.  At 2.43% 10 yr yields, it would not surprise me to see it back at 2.60% after the ECB meeting and NFP next Friday.

Most of the strength in Treasuries is being derived from an insanely strong European sovereign debt market.  Bunds are trading at 1.34%, close to all time lows hit in July 2012 at 1.16%.  Back then, US 10 yrs were trading at 1.45%.  The European bond market strength has spilled over to Treasuries, as a weakening euro has catalyzed a shift to US fixed income.   The strength in the European sovereigns is unsustainable for the short term, and very overbought, but I would not dare to short them long term.

I don't think the euro will weaken much more here, it is front running the ECB stimulus coming next week.  I am a long term believer in a strengthening euro and weakening dollar.

Stocks seem down right boring compared to bonds these days.  Even with a strong bond market, that doesn't signal any near term equity weakness, because this is foreign capital flows and short covering, not a change in the US economy.  The S&P will grind higher as it now has the tailwind of lower rates going for it.

Bonds Feeding Off Last Year's Pain

The bond market refuses to go down, despite S&P 500 going to all time highs and Nasdaq and Russell trading strong again.  There was so much pain in the bond market last year, it put a big scar in the psyche of bond longs.  The market is using the pain from bond longs last year to feed the current rally, as last year's sellers have turned into this year's buyers.  With short term rates at zero, fund managers cannot hold cash, they need to put it somewhere to generate yield.  Cash is literally burning a hole in the pockets of asset managers that don't want to fall behind their benchmarks by being underinvested.

Much like the equity longs' pain in 2008 fed the rally for so long.  I expect 2013 to have been the cleansing that the bond market needed to propel it to new lows in yields.  It is a better than 50-50 chance that 10 year yield to go back to the lows that you saw in the summer of 2012, within the next 2 years.

In the short term, the Treasuries are benefiting tremendously from a front running of the ECB meeting in June 5, when most expect some type of monetary stimulus.  European sovereign bonds have been absurdly strong and that strength is spilling over to the Treasury complex.  I don't think the strength is sustainable short-term, as the tendency for these type of QE announcements that are telegraphed is a run up in bonds ahead of the event, and then a selloff a few days before and after the announcement.  It is a bit different with equities, which run up into the announcement, and stay higher for a bit longer and then start to go back down.

Based on that timing of the ECB meeting June 5, it looks very likely that the global equity markets could top anytime between June 6 to June 20, which is triple witching day.  Until June 5, the stock market will probably keep grinding higher.

Stocks Will Go Higher

With a gap up after the 3 day weekend, at all time highs, it is quite the punch in the gut to the underinvested, and even more so to those all in cash or short.  The thing about the short side is that you get paid during short, brief periods of time, and in big chunks, but most of the time, you will bleed, and bleed some more.  I am talking about the overall market here, the S&P, not individual stocks.  Bad companies will go down regardless if it is a bull market or not.

I kind of just gave up on shorting the market for the most part from the fall of last year.  If something doesn't pay, why keep doing it?  Fed is still printing money like crazy, and has absolutely no desire to reduce their balance sheet.  

Anyone that says tapering is tightening doesn't know arithmetic.  The Fed balance sheet is getting larger, not smaller.  They are still doing QE.  Interest rates are at zero.  There is no tightening going on here.

Shorting wasn't paying so that's why I decided to find another method to express my longer term non-bullish views on the market.  Being long bonds over the past month was profitable while equities were going higher, and despite strong jobs numbers.

There will be a time to go short equities again but I will only do it under perfect conditions.  But I will go long bonds under less than perfect conditions, and also go long stocks under less than perfect conditions.  In an easy money environment, following the Fed trade, being long financial assets is much easier than being short them.  That is the underlying fundamental state of this time.

Grind higher.  It feels like another slow week with few opportunities.

Slow Grind to 1920

The typical holiday grind higher is happening before our eyes.  No one wants to be short ahead of the long weekend.  With only good news on the horizon, we should finally be free from this 1860 to 1890 trading range.  There is a healthy wall of worry with the Russell underperforming.  The market did it again.  The bull train left the station without Dennis Gartman and Ralph Acampora aboard.

It is surprising to still see so many bears despite this steady climb higher, right near all time highs.  As long as those bears don't throw in the towel, I expect this rally to continue.  Perhaps Draghi will give the final KO punch to the bears with a bazooka QE in June.  Even a QE lite will have shorts scrambling.

I will sell my bonds today ahead of the 3 day weekend.  Be back Tuesday.

Correction Happened Tuesday

Can you call a 0.7% down day a correction?  Are we that desperate as traders?  The VIX should be trading at 10, not 12.  Mind numbing action.  The much anticipated correction is over.  There is no way we're going down below Tuesday levels in holiday trading.  And holiday trading seems to be starting early.  Can't blame those leaving their trading stations today to start the 3 day weekend early.  They won't be missing much.

Those looking for a correction all have one thing in common:  divergences.  Pointing out the divergences of the Russell and the S&P as being bearish really isn't an edge.  It may be bearish over the long run, but over the short run, it doesn't matter.  Over the time frame that I usually look at for trading, these small cap-big cap divergences don't help me time anything.  In fact, my gut tells me we rip above 1900 next week, and then to 1920 by the first week of June.  It is making me nervous holding my bond position, which I will probably sell soon.

Even Down Days are Boring

The central banks have sucked the life out of the financial markets.  I heard a few weeks ago that the Japanese JGB market in 10 year bonds didn't trade for 36 hours during the week.  The 10 year yield there is 0.6%.  When the central banks decide what the price is for a financial asset, there is no motive to buy or sell for profit.  Because the price doesn't move.

That seems to be the road that the ECB is going to take.  They have deflation, like Japan did, and they are going to try to beat deflation by manipulating interest rates to as low as possible.  German Bunds are trading at 1.35%.  That is 115 basis points less than US 10 years.

Yesterday is more of the same.  Russell 2000 getting pounded, and the S&P only getting a little scratch.  For a down day, the action was quite boring.  You have the midday selloff, and then the 3:30 ramp job to make everything look OK.  It is a textbook pattern that keeps repeating in this hated bull market.  Everybody hates this stock market!  Including me!

Janet Yellen is back in the forefront, with Fed minutes to come later today.  These to me are nonevents, they say the same things over and over again.  Scripts fit for Lonesome Dove.  Endless free money, etc.  I don't know what it will take to ignite some volatility, perhaps it will be a rash of good news.  Bad news isn't doing job, that's for sure.

Many Looking for a Correction

The correction camp is getting crowded.  Dennis Gartman, flip flopper extraordinaire, is back to neutral, after he was pleasantly bullish.  He is looking for a correction.  So is Ralph Acampora, who was very bearish in early February, and now he's looking for a correction in stocks, because of the divergences.  Both are contrarian indicators, looking out over several weeks.  They may be right for a few days, but rarely right for longer than that.

Unfortunately, I am also hoping for a correction, but I am NOT short stocks.  I doubt we go below 1850, and probably won't even break 1860.  So any correction will be tiny, a 2% shake out, nothing more.  The ECB bazooka is coming in the first week of June, and it would be insane to short the market ahead of that with Gartman and Acampora looking for corrections.

The bull market rolls on, amid the complaints of many.

Dips Will Be Bought

We have been hearing a lot about the divergences in the major US stock indices.  The lagging small caps, the lagging Nasdaq, and the lower bond yields.  The right word for the average investor right now is cautiously complacent.  It is not total ignorance of risk, but also not a fear of something bad happening.  It seems like most are waiting for a small correction to buy the dip.  Which means it is likely that they are already underinvested, or gasp, even short this market.

I would really be surprised if we got below 1850.  And the SPX only gets down to 1850 if there is some bad news headline.  Without any news, I doubt you see anything below 1860.  So the lower bound for the next couple weeks is 1850-1860, and the upper bound is probably around 1920.  If we get to 1860, I will be looking to buy.  At 1850, I will be more aggressive with the buys.

So at the moment, the best approach is to wait for a dip.  And buy it.  It has been working for five years.  If there is no dip, no harm done and wait for the next opportunity.

On the bonds, it looks like the market has stabilized and there is strong resistance at 2.47% on the 10 year yields.  So we should trade in a tight range from 2.47 to 2.55 for the next several days.  There was a burst of volume last Thursday and it looks like a mini buying climax.  However, I'm still long bonds, as I expect the downtrend in yields to continue for quite a while.  Bonds right now are a supertanker on cruise control, the momentum will carry it forward longer than most expect.

Italy and Spain Bonds Crushed

Yesterday, you saw the Italian and Spanish government bonds get crushed on weak Eurozone economic data, something we have not seen in a very long time.  This was while Bunds rocketed higher in price, lower in yields.  This kind of blowout in spreads between PIIGS and German debt is rare these days.  The bullishness in European equities is irrational, unless you get a huge QE, which is possible, but not very likely.  More likely you get a QE lite from Draghi, who prefers words over actions.

The search for yield in junk bonds, leveraged loans, and PIIGS debt has pushed the yields to extreme lows on risky debt.  It got to the point where Spanish 5 year yields were lower than US 5 year yields a couple of weeks ago.  The reach for yield is near its end game.  Yesterday's blowout in Italy-Germany bond spreads was a warning shot.  The bulldozer is gathering steam.  Anyone continuing to buy junk bonds and PIIGS debt is picking up dimes and quarters in front of an accelerating bulldozer.

I was surprised to see the market go down yesterday, because the SPX has ignored all kinds of signs of a slowing economy.  Sentiment is not bullish, just complacent.  It seems like a lot of people in the middle, not too bullish, not too bearish.  A bunch of neutrals.  It makes it tougher to predict when you have a lack of extremes.  There are no easy trades in equities right now.

I would rather focus my energies on bonds, where a shift in money flows is palpable with each passing day.  There is now a clear trend in bonds.  Unlike shifty equity markets, the bond market takes time to change directions.  The bond market is like a giant cruise ship, it takes a while to turn but when it does, it goes on for a long time.  It looks like we've made the turn this month, and it has a ways to go.  I expect 10 year yields to stabilize a bit here, but it will not go back up much.  There will be steady pressure lower in yields as money flows in.  And there is a lot of money to flow in as most are underweight Treasuries.

Sentiment Shifting in Bonds

The opinions on the bond market are changing slowly.  Now that we have broken out of the 2.6-2.8% range in the 10 year, the bears are disappearing bit by bit, replaced with newly formed bulls.  On CNBC yesterday, the Fast Money crowd were all bullish on bonds, and overall, it seems like there are now more bulls than bears in bonds.  It doesn't change my opinion, but it does make it more likely that if we get a break higher in stocks over the next few weeks, the bonds will probably selloff, not ignore it like it has up to now.

We got a late selloff yesterday in stocks, and the sentiment is not that bullish.  Put/call ratios are still fairly high given the price action.  It seems like investors are nervous here, even though the market has remained strong.  With continuing weak economic data out of the Eurozone, ECB has their finger on the QE trigger.  The ECB bazooka coming up in early June will keep bears from getting to brave.  It will also keep longs invested because they don't want to miss any QE rallies.  Feels like we'll get a move lower down to SPX 1870, bottom for a few days, and then rocket above 1900.

The Fed Trade

Everything is going up.  Stocks are going up.  Bonds are going up.  Commodities are going up.  The Fed trade is in full motion.  Don't believe what the pundits tell you about the economy.  They can't forecast what will happen next month, much less the next year.  It is complete hubris for economists to predict a rate hike in the 2nd half of 2015 when Janet Yellen is saying she will keep rates low for a long time unless she sees CPI consistently above 2% and employment stronger.

I take Yellen for her word, she doesn't believe there is a bubble in the stock market, so she won't be taking any preemptive actions to prick a bubble.  And the government will continue to lie about inflation.  Wages aren't growing strong enough for the lie to be too obvious.  An if the lie isn't too obvious, they will continue to lie.

On any other sane world, the Fed would be in the middle of its rate hikes, but its not a sane world.  The Fed has an insatiable desire to keep interest rates at zero until there is a huge cry about inflation.  And we aren't anywhere close to that point.  In fact, the Fed is smarter than they are given credit for.  Fed fund rates at 2% or higher will kill the recovery and kill housing.  And by extension, kill a lot of the financial engineering games and thus kill the stock market.  So they are extremely reluctant to raise rates.  The pundits seem to overlook this, in their eagerness to see a more normal rate environment.  It just isn't happening.

Overnight, we got a huge move in Bunds, now 1.4% on the 10 yr there, which drove bonds much higher.  We haven't seen this kind of big bond rally overnight since Ukraine was the main headline.  This has come on very little news.  Which makes me believe that this bond rally has much farther to go.  Even while we are at all time highs in S&P.  Amazingly bullish market right now in bonds.  And stock indexes here are untradeable.

S&P All Time Highs

As the economy slows down, with retail sales barely budging despite consensus expectations for a bounce back from bad weather.  Let's just face it.  Economy and the stock market are trading on their own.  The economy is just not as strong as the pundits say it is.  But that shouldn't make one bearish on stocks.  Because stocks aren't going up because of a good economy, but because of financial engineering, ZIRP, and TINA (there is no alternative).

Last week, we had quite elevated put/call ratios despite a flat market, which often leads to short squeezes, like we had yesterday.  S&P is an amazingly strong market.  It really has broken away from economic fundamentals.  This usually happens late in a bull market.  The fundamentals are deteriorating, but the stocks hang tough.  This is especially the case in a long bull market with easy money policies.

This is controversial, but at this point, the stock market benefits more from low interest rates than it does from a strong economy.  So with interest rates going down recently, the stock market has embraced that as a positive for lower financing costs, and not a negative of a weakening economy.

I am bearish on the economy but neutral to slightly bearish on stocks.  I am bullish on bonds.  I don't know how high the S&P will go, but I do believe that anything above 1890 is not sustainable for long, maybe one month max.  But it could die out within days.  I am not willing to bet on musical chairs at this point.  I realize that I am in the majority, because I see a lot of skeptics of this bull market.  But that is what the fundamentals tell me.  

Nothing to do in the stock or bond front.  Just watching and holding.

S&P is the Final Boss

Whenever you play games like Super Mario Bros. or the like, there is a boss at the end of the level.  The first few levels, the boss is easy to kill, or has an obvious fatal flaw.  But when you get to the final boss, there are no obvious flaws and you have to be near perfect to beat him.

Well the S&P 500 is the final boss for the shorts.  It has no obvious flaws.  It is nearly flawless.  The Shanghai Composite is Glass Joe, the Eurostoxx is Soda Popinski, and S&P 500 is Mike Tyson.

We have another gap up today, with investors seeing everything they want from an ECB that will cut rates and do a QE, no tape bombs from China, and an S&P that refuses to go down despite Russell and Nasdaq getting pounded.  The final boss doesn't go down easily.  It will take a huge effort by the bears to take this market down.  It is foolish to short the S&P for more than a few hours.  It just doesn't pay.

By the way, 4 weeks have passed since the April bottom.  The grace period is mostly done.  The market will have to go up on its own natural strength, not the strength of covering shorts or underinvested managers.  Unfortunately for shorts, there seems to be plenty of natural strength in the S&P.

We have the Fed trade in motion over the last month, stocks up, bonds up, and commodities up.  Tapering is a nonfactor.  Market looks indestructible.  Too smart to go long, too scared to go short.

Don't Microtrade

Yesterday confirmed without a doubt that the money is aggressively seeking safety.  As the Russell continued to underperform, even as the S&P was up sharply from the open, bonds were making new highs for the year.  Another new high in the ZB and ZN June contracts before a bad 30 year auction put an abrupt end to the euphoria.  I was hoping for a bit more pullback this morning and I didn't get it, and there is no way I am going to miss out on a bigger move, so I am back long in bonds, paying up a little over what I sold yesterday.  I will stay long barring a blowoff top.  Microtrading to try to catch small little moves sounds good on paper but is usually counterproductive.  It is hard to just sit still with a good position when you are watching the market all day.  Lesson learned.  

There is a reason the VIX is at 13.43.  The market is going nowhere fast.  In other words, we are chopping around intraday, but ending up near the same place week after week.  It has been a fader's market in equities.  It's funny how basically we end flat on the day, but just because we sold off in the afternoon and made a so-called bearish candle on the charts,  it's supposedly a bad sign.  Not saying its bullish or bearish, but these so-called bearish patterns usually don't have much predictive ability.  

Just riding the uptrend in bonds and hoping for equity market weakness, but not betting on it.  Same old, same old.

Rocky Mountain Charts in Tech

You went up a huge tech stock mountain from the debt ceiling deadline to earlier this year, most peaking in March.  Since then, the descent has been rapid.  In its wake, the momo charts look like a volcano.  We are back at the base, with tons of overhead baggage above.  I have no interest in going long these momo tech wrecks.  They are still way overvalued, and I don't even need to name specific names.  They are ALL overvalued.  A few examples of what happened below:  SCTY and FEYE.

There are loads of charts like those above.

I should have sensed the top in March when the insanity of daily 100% gainers in pot stocks, fuel cell stocks (PLUG is a POS), Chinese flavor of the months, and biotech fever, each little biotech supposed to be the next cure for cancer or hepatitis or whatever.  It was a mania for anything momo, both big and small.  Now that the dust has settled, surprisingly the S&P is unscathed, but the Nasdaq is damaged goods now.  Just like 2000.

I eventually expect the hiding places to keep dwindling, the money managers are still confident that their defensive stocks are bulletproof.  Eventually this rolling correction will start affecting the large cap primary names.  While it still seems like easy money to buy the dips, like yesterday, and on Monday, the market is getting heavier by the day.  It is not a healthy market when defensives are leading and bonds are strong.  And yet the consensus among Wall Street is for the economy to pickup in the 2nd half.  I don't know how they can forecast the future, but if the consensus is optimistic about the 2nd half, that leaves much more room for disappointment.  And at current prices, stocks are priced for good times, not bad.

Not much to do here, as the market chops around.  Being long bonds is enough for my bearish appetite for now.  If I get even more bearish, I will start shorting emerging markets/China.

Nasdaq Trading Like its 2000

This exit from growth and momentum is no fleeting theme.  The persistent underperformance of Nasdaq and Russell are catching my attention.  Remember, this is what happened in 2000 and 2007.  The breadth deteriorated at the top in both of those years.  It is eery that this is happening 7 years later in 2014.  2000-2007-2014.  7-7-7.

Yellen's testimony was on the hawkish side, and yet you still had bonds go higher during the day.  There seems to be a theme developing here.  An exit from riskier, high valuation names, to safer, more defensive names.  And among those safe assets are Treasuries.

One thing going for the bulls is that sentiment seems a little downbeat, and dreary.  Not fearful, just a bit depressed.  I am slightly bearish, but not inspired to do anything with stocks here.  I continue to hold my long Treasury position.

Dull Market

We are still just chopping around since the Easter holiday.  We are near the end of the grace period (about 4 weeks) since we bottomed on April 11.  The bulls have had plenty of time to reestablish long positions after getting scared out in the tech wreck in April.  Now it gets harder.  I am leaning bearish, but not with a lot of conviction.  The strength in bonds, weakness in the Russell 2000, and lagging emerging markets favor the bears.  The bulls have a bull market and favorable price action on their side.

I side with the bears, but even if the market goes down, I expect it to be just a small little pullback, perhaps for 3 days and maybe 2% at most.  I see no major pullbacks unless you get a notable deterioration in China, which is possible, but just hard to time at the moment.

Muppet Assassins and Bonds

Goldman Sachs recommended to clients on Monday, April 28 to sell Treasury bonds, when the 30 year yield was 3.47%.  After the dust settled last week, the 30 year yield finished at 3.36%.

You will hear investment banks make a lot of market calls, most just a reiteration of the overriding sentiment of the time.  For those that are being honest and not trying to manipulate the public with their calls (-----> Goldman), they are just guessing and have no edge, or more likely, below average predictors.  Oddly enough, those that try to manipulate the public by doing the opposite of their calls, like a Goldman Sachs, are usually pretty accurate.  Accurately recommending wrong, because they are using their calls to provide better liquidity to enter the opposite side of the trade.  Goldman Sachs has a knack for waiting for a bull move to get overextended and get to near exhaustion, and then put out a buy recommendation.  Ditto on the opposite side, when they want to enter longs, putting out a sell recommendation, like they did with bonds early last week.

Many who have experience in the trading world know this, but surprisingly, it still gets a lot of play and influences a lot of market players to not do what Goldman wants to do, which is the opposite of their recommendation!  This allows Goldman to get better prices for their orders.  It is something to keep in mind when you hear Goldman in the news out with a buy or sell recommendation.  They are probably on the other side razing down muppets.  

On another note, the action in bonds last week was about as bullish as you can get.  It flew higher on a below average GDP number, something that usually doesn't move bonds that much, and even squeezed higher on a consensus beating ISM index number.  Most impressively, the reflexive dip in bonds on the strong nonfarm payrolls didn't last, and we made a monster reversal into positive territory on Friday.  So while the S&P was up about 1% on the week, bonds were up even more.  

The flows into bonds are coming back.  With German 10 yr bunds yielding just 1.45%, and Spanish and Italian bonds hovering around 3%, global bond fund managers are buying relatively cheap 10 yr Treasuries at 2.60%.  Once again, slow growth, low inflation, and the enormous amounts of global liquidity mean low interest rates.  We are not going back to the 5% Fed funds era again.  Not even 2%, as Bill Gross suggested.  We are stuck at zero.  Those looking for the Fed to raise rates are living in another era.  

I know the investment crowd is getting sick of zero percent interest rates, and Fed bond buying.  They better get used to it.  Demographics in the U.S. support the view that the Japanification of America is in full force, and will last a long time.

We've got a gap down without any reason, and no WW III.  I am getting more bearish on equities with each passing day.

Equities Look Tired

With this huge NFP number, way above consensus and almost 300K, you would have expected the S&P to shoot higher and stay higher.  We are up all of 2 points on a monster jobs number.  The Street was expecting a strong nonfarms payroll number, so most were positioned for another gap up.  I don't think too many fund managers were waiting for the NFP to come out to start buying.  They were front running this thing from Tuesday.

The market looks exhausted here.  We probably won't go down much right away, but we are probably going to stall out and trade sideways.  I see very little edge here.  Instead, I see Treasuries acting very strong.  With this blowout jobs number, I see a good opportunity to get long bonds at decent levels.  Once again, the inflows should start to go heavily towards bonds for the next several months.  We are heading into a seasonally strong period for bonds.  On the dip today, I got long bonds, looking to hold for a longer term trade.

P.S. - While I was writing S&P just dropped 4 points, so a gap down on a 288K nonfarm payrolls, 73K more than consensus.  This is the first time I have ever seen anything like this.  A gap down on a blockbuster jobs number.  This is making me more bearish intermediate term.

Good Jobs Number

Only one big event left this week and that is the nonfarm payrolls number.  Based on the BLS lowballing the jobs number for the past 4 months, expecting them to come out with some ridiculously high number that will cause a reflexive move up in equities and down in bonds.  I am not putting any money on this idea, but odds are probably 2 to 1 that we get a NFP beat.  

We are back at the top of the range here: 1840 to 1880.  Treasuries have been extremely strong as we cannot get a selloff that sticks, and we bounce back with ease.  With Spanish and Italian 10 years only 35 to 40 bps above Treasuries, you have a valuation mismatch.  10 yr Treasuries are a relative bargain at 2.65%.  

Waiting to establish a long position in bonds after hopefully a good jobs number tomorrow.  If we get a consensus or below consensus number, will have to scramble and pay up to buy.  Either good or bad number, expecting to get long bonds on Friday.